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The Vatican Increases Its Carbon Footprint in Paris

by Christopher A. Ferrara
December 4, 2015

In 1951, Venerable Pope Pius XII warned the pastors of the Church that “almost the whole human race is today allowing itself to be driven into two opposing camps, for Christ or against Christ. The human race is involved today in a supreme crisis, which will issue in its salvation by Christ, or in its dire destruction.”

Sixty-four years later, with the world in infinitely worse moral and spiritual condition than it was in 1951, the Vatican busies itself with the latest post-Vatican II substitute for the Catholic faith: environmentalism.

Addressing what amounts to the ecumenical council of the environmentalist religion, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris (COP 21), being held from November 30 - December 11, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, revealed the depth of the current Vatican’s delusional preoccupation with matters that are none of the Pope’s or the Church’s business, while ignoring the Church’s actual mission on earth: the salvation of souls.

As reported by the Vatican Information Service, Parolin’s address to COP 21 called for “a low-carbon economy and full human development. … the promotion of renewable energy and dematerialization [?], as well as the development of energy efficiency… the correct management of forests, transport and waste; the development of a circular model [?] for the economy; the implementation of appropriate, sustainable and diversified programmes for food safety and to combat food waste; strategies against speculation and ineffective or indeed at times harmful subsidies; and the development and transfer of suitable technologies.”

From the proclamation of the Gospel to all nations down through the centuries, according to the constant teaching of the Magisterium that outside the Church there is no salvation — a dogma of the faith as even Wikipedia recognizes — the present-day Vatican has descended to the self-parody of demanding a “low-carbon economy.”

Quite simply: Is this a joke?

Even more laughable is Parolin’s demand for “the implementation of sustainable models of production and consumption, new attitudes, and new lifestyles.” Really?

Let’s begin with the Cardinal’s own lifestyle: From his fossil fuel-heated and air-conditioned living quarters in the luxurious Vatican enclave, he and his entourage drove in fossil-fueled limousines to the airport, where a jet consuming vast quantities of fossil fuel transported them to Paris, where they got into more limousines that took them to their fossil fuel-heated and air-conditioned quarters, from which they departed for the Cardinal’s address to COP 21 at this facility, whose vast corridors are heated, cooled and lighted by — you guessed it — fossil fuel:

Joining Parolin and his entourage at this gathering are “world leaders” from around the globe, all of whom consumed vast quantities of fossil fuel to get there and will consume even vaster quantities during the conference, which will emit an estimated 300,000 tons of CO2. Yet they have all gathered together to issue the preposterous demand for a “low-carbon economy.”

So, what new, low-carbon lifestyle will Cardinal Parolin adopt after the conference is over? Of course he will go on living just as he did before COP 21. Nor will he lose a wink of sleep over the Pope’s hysterical claim that the world is “at the limits of suicide” because of CO2 emissions causing “climate change” — a claim Francis made while flying in his own fossil fuel-hogging jet on the way back from his fossil fuel-hogging voyage to Africa with a fossil fuel-hogging entourage of 100. And it goes without saying that when Francis returns to his five-star hotel digs in the Vatican, he is not about to undertake any “new lifestyle” either. Perhaps some more solar panels will be installed — all manufactured with the help of fossil fuel.

It’s all just empty talk. Hot air. Hot air consisting mostly of CO2, which humans and animals naturally produce every moment of their existence and on which plants thrive in the process of producing oxygen, but which the current Vatican apparatus joins the climate change fanatics in depicting as a deadly poison that threatens the planet’s very existence. And none of them really believe a word of it, as their own actions demonstrate.

What a mockery the human element of the Church has become since the ill-starred Council that no doubt looms large in the Third Secret. It would make for high comedy if it were not an epochal tragedy with eternal consequences. Only Our Lady of Fatima can turn this tragedy into triumph.

But, barring a miracle, don’t expect Francis to call upon the Blessed Virgin to save the world from the real crisis that confronts it, “which will issue in its salvation by Christ, or in its dire destruction.” The Pope is far too busy fretting about atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The almost unbelievable farce we are now witnessing shows no signs of ending. Yet we can find hope in the certain knowledge that just when all seems lost, the Immaculate Heart will triumph. Let us pray that we live to see that day.